


Mad Hatter With a Box

by Self_Indulgent_TMNT



Category: Alice In Wonderland - Lewis Carroll, Doctor Who
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-09
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-25 19:07:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12042321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Self_Indulgent_TMNT/pseuds/Self_Indulgent_TMNT
Summary: Written for a request:The Doctor ends up in Wonderland but its a place of nightmare. Later the Doctor hears the song White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane, and the line "go ask Alice, I think she'll know" makes him go and ask her, turns out she was once a companion of the eleventh Doctor, her madhatter with a box. Alice who is 20 tries to put wonderland behind her so isn't happy when the Doctor, who proves he's "got older" comes back requesting her help. Still they head off to save wonderland although Alice is shocked by what's happened to her safe haven of wonderland.





	Mad Hatter With a Box

Why did the TARDIS never do as he told it to? The Doctor wondered to himself as he lay, battered and bruised, on the floor of his disobedient time machine. Why did it always have to do its own thing, usually leaving him beaten up in the process? He opened his eyes and was greeted with the familiar smoke which accompanied a crashed TARDIS.  
“You may think you take me where I’m needed, but what about me? I need a holiday, not whatever this is” he muttered into the half-darkness of the control room. He had been trying to get to a holiday resort on an obscure moon, a rather lovely place and he’d rather not miss his booking at.  
With a groan, he clambered to his feet, wafting the smoke away from his face (a futile move as it was immediately replaced by more) and staggering to the door, leaning against it a second and reflecting on how he really didn’t want to find out where he’d been taken, before turning the handle and walking out into a cold darkness that he instantly didn’t like. He was in some kind of forest, he thought, although this wasn’t like any forest he’d want to visit. Warped, half-dead trees loomed above him and revealed glimpses of a red sky beyond. Beneath the thinning canopy was another forest, this one of oversized fungi. Toadstools he could have used as umbrellas were dotted among ones he could probably use as a house (practicality of living in a mushroom, aside). These weren’t your cliché cutesy type, either, they were an alarming shade of red with deep, purple spots. Just looking at them made him feel ill.  
He turned back to the TARDIS. “I’m gonna fix you, we’re gonna leave, and you’re going to take me where I bloody told you to” he said, giving the door a light kick and starting to head back inside.  
“Whoa there, strangerrrr” a voice behind him purred and he span around, faced with nothing but a grinning mouth.  
“Um, hello, mouth”  
“Mouth! I’ll have you know I am a proud feline” the mouth replied, slowly starting to fill in, the bottom jaw appearing, then the body and finally the top of the face., revealing dark fur that might once have been considered orange but had since darkened into a more burnt colour with dirty-white stripes breaking it up. The only thing missing was the eyes, dark holes where they should have been. The Doctor struggled to hide his mild horror at the sight.  
“What? Have you never seen an eyeless Cheshire cat before?” the creature asked.  
“Cheshire cat?”  
The cat sighed. “Yes, genius. I am the Cheshire cat. Isn’t it obvious?”  
“Where are your eyes?”  
He sighed again. “I still have eyes, they’re just dark. Like the rest of this forsaken place”  
“Yes, I’m glad you brought that up. Where am I, exactly?”  
“Where are you?” the cat grinned even wider, “Why, you’re here of course!”  
“And where might here be?” The Doctor snapped back, getting a terrible feeling of how this conversation might be going and already feeling the headache starting to form at the concept of endless confusing talk.  
“Well you’d have to tell me, you must have had a pretty good view as you fell from the sky”  
The cat floated around his head and faded in and out.  
“Yes, well I wasn’t really paying attention, I was busy trying not to crash”  
“You didn’t do a very good job”  
“Have you ever tried to stop a time machine crashing when it’s decided to do so?”  
“Time machine? Well, then you’re asking all the wrong questions. To truly understand where you are, you must first know when. If you had crashed some years ago then I would have answered ‘you are in Wonderland, my dear friend’ but you didn’t, you crashed now, so instead I shall reply that you’d better fix your box before the locals decide to ‘fix’ you”  
“Would that I could, it’s a little more difficult to fix a time machine than just snapping my fingers” – he snapped his fingers as if to demonstrate that that wouldn’t sort things. The cat grinned wider.  
“In that case, good luck with the Queen of Broken Hearts. She might take a liking to you, in which case you might be ok. It’s more likely she takes your head instead. She does that a lot. None of her soldiers have heads anymore. It makes fighting a little more difficult, considering they can’t see what they’re hitting"  
The Doctor did not like this place. It was dark and cold and this damn cat thing wouldn’t stop talking gibberish while behind him his TARDIS smoked quietly to itself. And now he could hear people coming this way.  
The cat began to fade away until he was just a smile.  
“You’ve done it now. Good luck with her”  
Then he was gone, and soldiers were filing into the clearing, in armour covered in pictures of shattered and cracked hearts. They didn’t pause to ask questions, just walked towards him like machines and took his arms in iron grips, unable to explain themselves due to their lack of mouths. The Doctor did not want to be dragged, he questioned them at first and then protested and then struggled but he could do nothing to loosen the hands on his arms as his feet began to drag in the dirt.  
They bumped into trees more times than he cared to count on the relatively short journey through the trees, never once letting go. If it wasn’t rather painful he would probably have found the whole thing rather tedious. He would have gone with them if they’d just asked! He tried to explain this to them as they went:  
“You know, I’m perfectly capable of walking. I’d happily accompany you to whoever it is wishes to see me, I’m really rather curious as to where the hell I am”  
This got no response from his captors.  
“Alternatively, if it’s my exit you’re after then I really don’t need to meet this queen at all. If you give me a couple of hours alone with my box I can probably get it working again and I’ll be right out of your way”  
Still no response.  
“Not very talkative, are you?”

He was so busy making his own conversation that he almost missed the trees thinning out into a large clearing. A crumbling building which was the very definition of faded grandeur sat in the middle surrounded by a tangle of bushes, sporting black roses.  
He was dragged across the lawn, which was full of equally headless people in identical uniforms, all standing to attention facing towards a cracked throne in the centre of what may once have been a lawn. A woman sat on the throne, overweight and pale with a torn black and white dress and a broken crown on her head.  
He was thrown rather unceremoniously at her feet. The woman looked from him to the soldiers who’d brought him.  
“Well what am I supposed to do with this?!” she snapped.  
“This! I’ll have you know that my current preferred pronouns are he and him! Although you could call me Doctor, since that’s my name”  
The queen looked at him, both alarm and anger in her face.  
“How dare you talk to me like that?”  
“I’m only giving you about as much respect as I received. All I did was crash and next thing I know I’m being confused by an invisible cat and kidnapped”  
“I am the queen of this land! There was a time I’d behead you for such insolence, but well…” – she swept an arm around at the collection of headless soldiers – “you can see what that got me. I’ll allow you off with a warning this time, next time you’re losing whichever limb my nincompoop soldiers manage to hack off first”  
“Quite the place to be queen of” the Doctor remarked, shaking off the hands of the now motionless soldiers and climbing to his feet. The queen sighed.  
“Well it wasn’t always like this. Once upon a time this was a beautiful place, a land of wonders, such stuff as dreams are made of”  
“What happened?”  
She looked at him suspiciously but then caved. “I’m only talking to you because you’re the only person with a head I have left, you understand. Those insane animals, the mouse and the hare, ran off weeks ago and I summoned the white rabbit but he’s so late he might as well be dead”  
“What happened?” he repeated.  
“Oh, I don’t know. One minute, Alice was here and it was all good and then she left and the whole damn world turned sour”  
“Alice?”  
“Oh, you must know her. Blue dress, blonde hair, infuriating”  
“Can’t say that rings a bell”  
“Really? Shame, if anyone can fix this mess of a world she can”  
The Doctor glanced around at the dark, dying world around him. “What makes you think one person can fix this?”  
The queen looked at him in amusement. “Don’t you know? This is her world. Our whole existence is tied to her. If I had to make a guess, I’d say the world can’t sustain itself without her to keep us together”  
“Well if you release me and allow me to fix my box, then perhaps I will encounter her in my travels, and you never know, I might bring her back here”  
The queen was clearly suspicious. “Why would you do that?”  
He shrugged. “It’s what I do. I fix things”  
The queen’s shoulder’s sagged. “Fine, you may leave. It’s not like I actually have any need of you. Do what you can to find Alice, if you return her I’m sure I will find a reward for you”  
The Doctor simply nodded, offered a brief thanks, and left.

The TARDIS fixed a lot easier than he’d been expecting. It was almost as if she was satisfied that he’d seen what he’d been brought here to see. He continued on his way to his original destination, a particularly luxurious leisure planet, he’d decided he deserved a treat and he’d been holding on to a voucher for some years after having saved the resort from rampaging baked goods once (don’t ask). But he couldn’t get his brief setback out of his mind.  
Who was this Alice person? He couldn’t help the feeling that he should know, should remember. It was dancing on the edge of his consciousness, the answer that would satisfy him.  
It took a song to jog his memory.  
The TARDIS was still messing around, shuffling through a playlist of Earth songs he didn’t remember making. He was taking his time, dancing around merrily while he flicked controls and fixed damage to secondary systems he hadn’t quite finished in Wonderland. There was one song started blasting over his speakers and it started to tug at the same memories as the words of the Queen of Broken Hearts.  
He let it play once, then he played it again, and then a 3rd time.  
There was one line that he couldn’t get out of his head. ‘Go ask Alice, I think she’ll know’  
It was on its 6th playthrough when he finally put it all together.  
Blonde hair, blue dress, a charming smile and an overactive imagination, one capable of coming up with a whole world.  
Alice.  
He knew her, she’d travelled with him, only for a few days but it had been wonderful. He’d worn a different face at the time and she’d called him a different name.  
Her mad hatter with a box, she’d said. She’d said that it was a name inspired by someone she’d once known, the real mad hatter.  
How could he have forgotten?  
It had been so long ago, a literal lifetime. He couldn’t remember where she was, but when the TARDIS landed it was clear that she knew.  
He stepped out of the door and, instead of finding a sun soaked land of relaxation, he found a café. A tea room, actually.  
And there she was…  
Blonde hair, blue dress, bright smile. 20 years old now, he estimated, but the sight of her bouncing round the café and taking orders brought the memories rushing back.  
Yes, this was the girl.  
He strolled in, took a seat at a table, and waited for her to come to take his order. He had no intention of ordering, anything of course.  
“Are you ready to order?” she asked with a bright smile.  
“Well, actually, I was hoping we could have a chat, catch up a bit” he said. She was visibly confused.  
“Catch up? Do we know each other?”  
“We did, ‘though I wore a different face and you were significantly younger at the time. Perhaps it would be more obvious if I had come in wearing a mad hat”  
Her face lit up.  
“Doctor! What are you doing here?!”  
She threw herself down into the seat in front of him.  
“Well I recently crash landed somewhere I didn’t know, but you’re quite familiar with it I believe”  
“Where might that be?”  
“Does the name Wonderland ring a bell?”  
Her face fell.  
“I get off work in 20 minutes, we can talk then”  
He ate a slice of cake while he waited and enjoyed a cup of some form of exotic tea, eventually being joined by Alice.  
“I left Wonderland behind, Doctor. I walked away from that madness”  
“I know, that’s why I’m here”  
“What do you mean?”  
“It’s like a nightmare, Alice. The Queen”  
“The Queen of Hearts?” she cut across.  
“The Queen of Broken Hearts she calls herself now. She told me that-”  
“You talked to her? I’m surprised she didn’t behead you”  
“She’d done that to everyone else. She only talked to me because I was the only person left to talk to, all her soldiers were walking around headless”  
“What?”  
“Would you just let me explain. She told me that once you left the world began to turn sour. It’s dark, the sky’s red, the forest is twisted, the cat has no eyes, the soldiers are headless and the mushrooms are like trees”  
“That’s awful! My friends…”  
“Your friends? Thought you’d left it all behind?”  
“I had… But that thought of them living like that…”  
“The queen said that if anyone can fix it, it’s you”  
“But… I can’t go back”  
“Why not?”  
“Because it’s insane!” – the café patrons looked up at her outburst so she lowered her voice – “that place is all poison and madness”  
“Well, from what I can gather, it’s your place. Your madness”  
“I…”  
“Come back, just for a look, please. Maybe you’re the solution”  
“You just can’t face the fact that there’s something you can’t fix” she accused, turning her anxiety to anger.  
“No, I can’t do nothing when I know I can do something. I’m different now, I’ve learnt lessons, I’m older”  
She laughed a little. “You can say that again”  
“Alice, please, trust me one last time”  
She looked into his eyes for a long moment, the energy gone from hers, replaced with reluctance. But he was her mad hatter with a box, even with this new face she knew that. She simply couldn’t refuse him.  
“Fine, I’ll come with you. Only for a short trip, mind. I’ll see the damn place, prove there’s nothing I can do, and then you’ll bring me back to my life”  
“Deal”

The journey back to wonderland was, in a word, awkward. If two words were allowed, the other would be endearing.  
Alice had travelled with the Doctor on a whirlwind adventure once, a long time ago, and since then she’d filed it away like a beautiful dream and had found herself a normal life. Being back in the TARDIS, changed as it was, made her a child again. The smells, the sounds, the memories. She was trying to look sceptical, like all of this was just to prove him wrong, but when he started the engine and there was the familiar, indescribable sound, her face lit up and she could barely hold in her squeal of delight as the ship jolted.  
“I thought you were trying to be annoyed” the Doctor said, the barest hint of a smile showing.  
She couldn’t reply without losing face entirely, so just threw him a smile and an eyeroll. “Let’s just get there, shall we?”

It didn’t take long before the TARDIS span out of control again, landing in Wonderland with a bump and a small amount of smoke. Alice glared.  
“Will you never land this thing smoothly?” she snapped.  
“That was smooth… sort of” he threw back.  
The thrill of the ride over, her foul mood settled back over her.  
“Shall we just see this damn place then?”  
She flicked her hair as she turned on her heel and stomped towards the door, although the attitude dropped the moment she stepped outside. The red sky cast an unhealthy glow on her face as she stumbled into the clearing the Doctor had been in earlier, staring up at the dying trees and sickly fungi. She sniffed and visibly gagged on the rancid air.  
“W-what happened here?”  
The Doctor walked up beside her, and he could make out the slight shine of tears in her eyes.  
“You left, that’s all I know”  
“This isn’t the wonderland I left. This is… horrible”  
“I know”, he held out his hand to her, “shall we go and see the queen?”  
She nodded slightly, all bravado gone, a frightened girl again. “Just don’t let her behead me”  
“Would I do that?”  
She took his offered hand, but stiffened when she heard clumsy footsteps approaching. “What’s that?”  
“The queen’s headless guards”  
“Oh, of course, naturally”, she didn’t sound at all calm.  
Two of the guards from earlier stumbled into the clearing.  
“Woah there, stand down guys, it’s me again. And look who I’ve brought” the Doctor said, pointing to Alice who waved slightly.  
“Um, hi. I’m back”  
The guards stood to attention. The Doctor moved his arm in a sweeping motion. “Show us the way”  
The guards headed off again, crashing into trees and stumbling over tree roots until they emerged into the palace clearing. Beside the Doctor, Alice gasped.  
“It just gets worse” she whispered, “I had no idea”  
“With any luck, you can fix it all”  
“Yeah…”

The Queen rose from her seat as they approached. “Doctor! You did it! You found her! Alice, I can honestly say I am glad to see you”  
“I can’t say the feeling’s mutual. Why am I here? How can I possibly fix all of this?”  
“This world is yours, Alice” an all too familiar voice said, followed by a grinning mouth appearing by the Queen, and the rest of the Cheshire Cat’s body slowly filling in.  
“Cat! Your eyes!” Alice cried.  
“I am well aware of what my eyes look like, my dear”  
“But how?”  
“You left, and you took the magic that binds this world together with you. Without Alice, there is no Wonderland. It’s your imagination that created us and it’s your imagination that can save us”  
“But I don’t know how, Cat”  
“Of course you do. Just believe you can do it. Everything here exists because you believed it did, you may not have known you were doing it back then but you were. And you can do it now”  
“I was a child, I don’t have that same imagination” she cried, despair in her voice.  
“You mean you can’t even imagine a pair of eyes for an old cat!”  
The Queen spoke up now. “Look, Alice, you’re not ordinary, I know you’ve tried to be but you’re not. You created a world, and you can recreate it. Now just do it”  
Alice tiptoed forwards, lifted a finger, placed it on Cat’s nose, screwed her eyes shut and concentrated. The dark holes of Cat’s eyes brightened, and by the time she pulled her finger away they were bright, cat-ish eyes gleaming with mischief.  
“See, told you you could do it!”  
Alice squealed in delight. “I did it! Doctor, I did it!”  
“Yes, yes you did it, now give my men their heads back” the Queen snapped. Alice screwed her eyes shut and with a popping sound the soldiers had heads again. A moment later and the sky cleared, the sun came out and a cool breeze flowed through the clearing, as it hit the trees they sprouted leaves, the toadstools changed colour and shrank to sensible sizes. The crumbling palace rebuilt itself brick by brick.  
When Alice opened her eyes, Wonderland was whole again.  
“I… I did it”  
The Doctor smiled. “See, I’m not that mad after all”  
“No, no I guess you’re not”  
“You still want this to be a flying visit?”  
Alice paused, a small smile on her face. “No, no I think I want to stay. How about you, don’t suppose you want to hang around for a bit”  
“Well I had planned on a visit to a nice leisure planet…”  
“Well I can probably just conjure one of those up right now”  
“Woah there, honey” the queen cut in “just be careful. You may know what you can do now, but don’t go plonking a water park on my lawn”  
“I guess I could be convinced to stick around a bit” the Doctor said.  
“Great! But first, gotta get you a hat, my mad hatter with a box”  
“Just make it stylish, ok. No Fezzes”  
“But Doctor, Fezzes are cool”

He didn’t want to agree, but he couldn’t not.

**Author's Note:**

> I am no longer open for requests, so please don't give me any. Thanks :-):-)


End file.
